Part 14

The moonlight lay in a molten flood between them and the house. But it was no time now for deliberation. Crossing that bright strip at a crouching run, the three were at the window; Annister’s harsh whisper hissed in the silence, through those iron bars:

“_Mary!_”

For a heart-beat silence answered him; then, faint and thin, in a faint, tremulous, sobbing breath, there came the answer:

“Steve—thank God!”

Annister had spoken the girl’s name without thought. At that high moment forms had been futile; that whisper had been wrung from him, deep-down, as had her answer. And then the soft rasp of steel on steel told that Ellison was at work.

But the giant was working against time. At any moment now might come the alarm; they had no means of knowing the number of those within those walls; perhaps even now peril, just behind, might be stalking them, out of the dark.

And still that soft rasp went on, until, at a low word from the girl, the giant, laying down his file, bent, heaved, putting his shoulder into it; and the bars sprang outward, bent and twisted in that iron grasp.

Annister, his hand reaching for the hand of the girl, went inward silently, to stand a moment, without speech, in the thick darkness of the little cell. But it was no time for dalliance.

Kane and Ellison behind him now, he set his shoulder against the door, as, Ellison aiding, it splintered outward with a soft, carrying crash. Ahead of them, along a dark, narrow corridor, there had come on a sudden sound of voices, murmurs; Annister, going toward that sound, saw suddenly an open door; light streamed from it as the murmur of voices rose:

“My friend, I bring you—forgetfulness....”

The words came in a sort of hissing sibilance as Annister, reaching that doorway, halted a moment as the tableau was burned into his brain:

He saw his father, helpless, his face gray with the hideous terror of that which was upon him, in the grasp of two cloaked and hooded figures, their dark faces grinning with a bestial mirth.

And before him, hand upraised and holding a curious, funnel-shaped object at which the man in the corner shrank backward even as he looked, he saw a tall man with a black, forking beard—the same that he had seen that evening at the corner of the street; the same that he had seen in that dim backwater of Rangoon, the Unspeakable—the man with the dark, foreign visage, and the eyes of death.

_CHAPTER THIRTEEN_

THE JAILER OF SOULS

Annister’s gun went up and out as the black-bearded man, turning, saw him where he stood.

Travis Annister, parchment-pale, took two forward, lurching steps, as the doctor, backing stiffly against the wall, hands upraised, called something in a high sing-song, savage, inarticulate.

Then—everything seemed to happen at once. A snarling, animal outcry echoed from the passage just without; it rose, as there came a far, gobbling mutter of voices, and the _pad-pad_ of running feet.

The hooded Familiars, as one man, turned, and the long knives flashed, luminous, under the lights, as Kane and Ellison, meeting them half way, raised their heavy guns.

Annister, covering the Doctor, froze suddenly in motion as that gobbling horror mounted, and then, filling that narrow way like figures in a dream, they came: the outcasts, the lost battalion, the Men Who Had no Right to Live.

In their van, but running rather as if pursued than as if in answer to that snarling call, there came three men, guards by their dress, their faces contorted, agonized, upon them the impress of a crawling fear. They streamed past that door, pursuers and pursued, as Black Steve Annister, finger upon the trigger of his pistol, saw that lean hand sweep upward; it flicked the thin lips; the dark face grayed, went blank; the Dark Doctor, his gaze in a queer, frozen look upon Eternity, pitched forward upon his face.

In some way, as Annister could understand, the madmen had won free, but—how?

Turning, he saw a white face at his elbow as there sounded from without the staccato explosions of a motor, and a swift, hammering thunder upon the great door.

“I am—Newbold Humiston,” said the face, “and I am not mad, or, rather, I am but mad north-north-west when the wind is southerly,” he quoted, with a ghastly smile. “This devil—” he pointed to the body of Elphinstone—“has gone to his own place, but the evil that he did lives after him—in _us_.”

His voice rose to a shriek as there came a rush of feet along the corridor: a compact body of men, at their head a tall man at sight of whom Stephen Annister flung up a hand.

“Well, Childers,” he said. “I’m glad!”

Childers spoke pantingly, in quick gasps:

“We just made it, old man,” he said. “A day ahead at that. The station agent put us on the track. We got ’em all—Lunn, and the rest; all but Rook—”

He paused, at Annister’s inquiring look, turning his thumb down with an expressive gesture.

“We found him—strangled—in his office ... a queer business....”

Annister gave an exclamation.

“The Indian!” he said. “Well, Rook was the ‘Third Light,’ sure enough!”

Again he was seeing the lean, avid face in the vestibule of the smoker, the lighted match; himself, and the conductor, and Rook, the lawyer’s pale eyes brooding above the glowing end of his cigarette.... And again, as the picture passed, he was aware of the white face at his elbow as Mary Allerton, her hand in his, behind her the golden hair and the wide eyes of Cleo Ridgley, turned to Childers with a smile that yet had in it a hint of tears.

He that had been Newbold Humiston continued:

“The others—they’re quiet now. The guards have gone—to follow _him_—the others saw to that.”

He gestured toward the silent figure on the floor.

“His plan was worthy of his master, the Devil, because it was diabolically simple: Rook was his procurer and his clearing-house; you see, Rook found the victims, and cashed the checks that Elphinstone wrung from them; and then, when they had cleaned up, or when they deemed the time was ripe, the victims—disappeared. Rook’s secretary they kidnapped for revenge; Miss Allerton because she knew much; they suspected that she was in the Secret Service. And so—these others disappeared.”

He laughed; the laugh of a dead man risen from the tomb.

“They disappeared—yes—but—they remained, as you see—myself—a living ghost!”

“But how?” asked the younger Annister, in the sudden quiet, the realization of what his father and Mary had escaped burning like a quick fire in his veins. The toneless voice went on:

“Elphinstone was a surgeon, a master.... You’ve heard of Dermatology? Well, it’s been done in India, I believe; practiced there to an extent unknown here, of course. An anesthetic, and then an operation: new faces for old, forged faces; the thing was diabolically simple. And so when they, the victims, saw themselves in a mirror, sometimes they went mad, for who could prove it? Who would be believed?”

His voice rose, died, gathered strength, as a candle flames at the last with a brief spark of life:

“It’s done,” he muttered. “He’s gone—but his work lives after him, even as he called himself—the Jailer of Souls!”

THE END.

Editor Baffled by Weird Seance

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lecture tours in the United States have created wide discussion and considerable difference of opinion, some persons contending that he is really in communication with the spirit world, while others declare that he is the victim of tricksters. In order to conduct an impartial investigation, J. Malcolm Bird, associate editor of The Scientific American, attended several of Sir Arthur’s seances, and afterward declared that he had observed psychic phenomena that could hardly be explained by any known natural cause. He could discover no physical connection between the medium or the spectators and the phenomena, and he saw mysterious self-luminous lights, attributed by Sir Arthur to ectoplasm, and heard strange noises that defied his efforts to establish a natural cause.

“My best judgment would be that both in direction and subject matter much of the ‘communicated’ material of the seance would be quite beyond the normal ability of the medium,” he said. “The seance entered a phase which seems to me to prove, without question, that telepathy or some other force with intelligence behind it was at work.

“The trumpet began to talk, loudly and distinctly and coherently, in a voice that had not yet been heard.... It was not ordinary ventriloquism, because the ventriloquist cannot work in the dark. He doesn’t deceive your ears, but rather your eyes, by directing your attention to the point whence he wishes you to infer that the sound came. The voice really came from the center of the circle.”

JACK O’ MYSTERY

_A Modern Ghost Story_

_By_ EDWIN MacLAREN

The limousine came to a glistening stop before an office building in Monroe Street, and a handsome woman of thirty, expensively and stylishly gowned, emerged from the car and entered the building, her mien bespeaking nervousness.

Furtively, as one who fears pursuit, she hastened across the marble rotunda, edged hurriedly into an elevator and ascended to the ninth floor, where she approached a door bearing upon its opaque glass panel the gilt lettering:

BARRY DETECTIVE AGENCY

She paused here for a moment, in an effort to recover her equanimity; and then, with a brave assumption of self-assurance, she opened the door and entered the room and closed the door behind her.

[Illustration]

The room was quite deserted; but promptly from an adjoining chamber there came a lean-faced young man of inquiring blue eyes, who courteously greeted her.

“Is Mr. Barry in?” she asked. “Mr. Herbert Barry?”

“I am Herbert Barry,” he said.

“Oh!” Surprised, she eyed the slim young man half incredulously. He seemed scarcely more than a boy. “Mrs. Franklin Parker told me about you—recommended you very highly. Perhaps that is why,” she added, with a smile, “I expected to find an older man.... I suppose most of the people who come to see you are in trouble of some sort. _I_ am not in trouble, exactly, but—” She glanced around the office. “May I have a word with you in privacy?”

He held open the door to the adjoining room. “Suppose we step in here? My stenographer is at lunch. There’s no danger of our being disturbed.”

Preceding him into the inner office, she bade him lock the door; and, thus assured of their safety from interruption, she sat nervously on the edge of a chair and faced him across the flat-top desk. There clung to her, somehow, a subtle suggestion of wealth and luxury, and her well-chiseled features denoted good breeding. Subtle, too, was the delicate odor of violets that fragrantly touched his nostrils as she leaned toward him across the desk. Then he noticed she wore a rich cluster of the flowers upon her mauve silk waist.

He observed, also, the purplish shadows beneath her large brown eyes, her half-frightened, half-worried demeanor and her air of suppressed excitement, as though she were struggling to control some inner perturbation.

“Perhaps I’ve made a mistake,” she began, “in coming here. I don’t know. But I’ve been so perplexed, so utterly mystified, by some strange things that have happened lately—Did you ever hear of Willard Clayberg?” she broke off suddenly to ask.

Barry knitted his brows. The name had a familiar sound.

“Yes,” he said, after a pause, “I seem to remember him. Wasn’t he the North Shore millionaire who went insane last winter and killed his wife and himself?”

She nodded. Her elbows were resting on the desk and her slender fingers, interlaced beneath her small white chin, were twitching.

“Exactly. They lived, as you probably recall, in a quaint old-fashioned home near Hubbard Woods—just the two of them; no children. Following the tragedy, the house was closed up and for a long while remained unoccupied. Despite the scarcity of dwelling places, nobody apparently cared to live there. For one thing, it is not a modern residence, and for another—and this really seemed the most serious objection—it had acquired a reputation of being ‘haunted.’

“Of course,” she went on, with a nervous little laugh, “you will say—just as _I_ said—that such a thing is perfectly absurd. You’d think that no normal person would take it seriously. And yet there were so many strange things told about the house—creepy stories of weird sounds in the dead of night and unearthly things seen through the windows—that people, ordinarily level-headed, began to shun the place.

“I have never believed in ghosts, Mr. Barry, and I’ve always ridiculed people who did; but now—Do you know my husband, Scott Peyton?”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Barry. “Architect, isn’t he?”

“A very successful one. He has designed some of the finest buildings in Chicago. But he’s the most superstitious man alive! He’s a Southerner, born in Georgia, and at childhood his negro ‘mammy’ filled his mind with all manner of silly superstitions, including a deathly fear of ‘ha’nts.’ He has never been able to overcome this, although both of us have tried.

“About three weeks ago,” Mrs. Peyton continued, her voice betraying her agitation, “he and I were motoring along the North Shore when we espied this old Clayberg estate. The quaint charm of the old-fashioned place at once enchanted me; and when we alighted and strolled through the grounds my enchantment grew. It seemed as if Nature had outdone herself in lavishing picturesque beauty there. Mr. Peyton was as fascinated as I.

“We were planning, at that time, to give up our town apartment and buy a suburban home; and this seemed to be just the thing we were looking for. We inquired of the neighbors concerning it, and it was then we discovered its tragic history. When my husband was told of the hideous thing that had happened there last winter, and of its evil reputation since, his enthusiasm vanished, and I immediately saw he would never consider buying it.

“But I had set my heart on having that place; and later—after I had pleaded and argued with him in vain—I decided to buy it myself and, by compelling him to live there, perhaps cure him permanently of his superstitious fear. I saw the agent next day, learned the old home could be bought at a bargain, and had my father buy it and deed it to me.

“My husband was furious when I told him what I had done. He declared he would never enter the house and urged me to sell it forthwith. But I was as firm as he; and finally, after a rather violent argument and by taunting him with being a coward, I contrived to get his reluctant consent to make our home in the ‘haunted house’.”

* * * * *

“We moved in last Thursday,” said Mrs. Peyton sitting nearer the desk and lowering her voice, “and on Thursday night, and every night since then—” She exhaled audibly, her lip quivering.

“What happened?” asked Barry.

“It’s been a nightmare!” she exclaimed with sudden vehemence. “Ever since that first night the most peculiar things have happened. I don’t know what to make of it, or what to think, or do. It’s baffling! I’m not in the least superstitious; and yet—”

“Start at the beginning,” suggested Barry, “and tell me exactly what happened.”

“Well, the first night we slept in the master’s bedroom—a large front room on the second floor—and about midnight I was awakened by my husband, who was sitting up in bed, gasping and trembling with terror. Before I could speak, he sprang from bed and switched on the light and began frantically searching the room, looking into the closets and under the bed and peering into the hall.

“‘For heaven’s sake!’ I cried. ‘What’s the matter?’

“He pointed to the corridor door. His hand was trembling and his face was as white as paper. For a moment he seemed unable to speak.

“‘It came right through that door!’ he said at last. ‘I woke up just as it came in the room—a ghastly-looking old man with white hair and a long beard. It didn’t open the door, but came right _through_ it!’

“‘Nonsense!’ I laughed. ‘You’ve been thinking about ghosts until you imagine you’re seeing them. Now come back to bed and go to sleep.’

“But he indignantly insisted he had actually seen the thing.

“‘I saw it cross the room,’ he declared, ‘and stop at the bed and stand there looking down at me. When I sat up it disappeared—vanished into air.’

“I couldn’t believe such a preposterous thing, of course, but, to humor him, I offered to get up and help him search the house.

“‘What good would that do?’ he objected. ‘I tell you the thing was a _spirit_!’

“Finally he went back to bed. But he slept no more that night. At breakfast next morning I could see he hadn’t closed his eyes.

“On the following night I again was awakened by my husband, who seemed even more frightened than before.

“‘It came back again!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘It was puttering around your desk over there.’

“Then he jumped out of bed and ran to the desk and lit the lamp there. A moment later he uttered a sharp cry and came hurrying back to my bed, with a sheet of writing paper in his hand.

“‘Look at that!’ he exclaimed, and thrust the paper before my eyes.

“I saw written on the paper, in a sprawling hand, the words, ‘_Leave this House!_’ and I knew then that somebody had been in the room.

“I got up and tried the door. It was still locked and the key was in the hole, just as I had left it. The windows hadn’t been touched, apparently. How, then, had the person entered our room?

“My husband, of course, insisted it was not a living being, but a ghost, who could pass through a locked door as though it didn’t exist. And, as before, he refused to look for it.

“Next day, however, with our cook and houseman, I thoroughly searched the house from top to bottom—and found nothing. No trace of anybody having entered the house. Nothing wrong anywhere.

“On Saturday night I was awakened again—this time by a frantic knocking on our bedroom door. I sat up, startled. My husband was sleeping soundly, exhausted after two sleepless nights.

“I slipped quietly from bed, without disturbing him, and tiptoed to the door and whispered through the panel:

“‘Who’s there?’

“The cook’s voice answered, and I could tell by her tone she was terribly frightened:

“‘It’s me, ma’am. I’m leavin’ this house tonight. I won’t stay here another minute!’

“I opened the door and stepped out in the hall—taking care not to awake Mr. Peyton—and found Clara fully dressed and holding her traveling-bag. It was evident she had dressed in considerable haste, and it was equally plain that she was almost paralyzed with fear.

“‘I just seen a spook!’ she gasped. ‘An old man with white hair and whiskers. He come right in my room while I was asleep. I woke up and seen ’im. And he writ somethin’ on my dresser. You c’n see for yerself, ma’am, what he writ there.’

* * * * *

“Fearful of awakening my husband, I had drawn her away from the bedroom door; and now, with some difficulty, I persuaded her to follow me to her room, where I found, written in white chalk across the bureau mirror, the command: ‘_Leave here at once!_’

“Clara was determined to obey this ‘message from the dead’ by leaving instantly. I couldn’t induce her even to stay until morning. Despite my protests and entreaties, she fled from the house and passed the remainder of the night, as I later discovered, in the Hubbard Woods railroad station, taking an early train for Chicago.

“I tried to keep the occurrence from my husband, inventing an excuse for Clara’s hasty departure, but he wormed the truth from me, and of course that further harassed his already overwrought nerves. Also, it gave him the right to say, ‘I told you so!’

“He renewed his pleading to abandon the house; but I still refused to give it up—still refused to admit that it was ‘haunted,’ or that there was anything supernatural in what he and Clara had seen.

“It didn’t end there, unhappily. On the very next night—that was night before last—the houseman was visited by the mysterious ‘thing.’ He said he saw it in his room, after midnight, stooping over his table, that he shouted at it and it disappeared. Then, so he told us, he got up and struck a light and discovered the ‘ghost’ had been trying to send a message to him by arranging some matches on the table.

“He showed us these matches, saying he had left them just as they were found. They were so placed as to spell the word, ‘_LEAVE_,’ in capital letters. Evidently the ‘ghost’ was frightened away before he could finish his sentence. Needless to say, the houseman left us.

“Well, in spite of all these things, I simply couldn’t bring myself to believe that the mysterious visitations were supernatural. I was sure there must be some logical explanation. But _last_ night—!”

“What happened last night?” asked Barry, as Mrs. Peyton paused.

Mrs. Peyton, still sitting forward in her chair, was searching in her reticule. Barry noticed her fingers were unsteady and that her underlip was caught between her teeth to still its quivering.

“Last night,” she went on, with a transparent effort at lightness, “_I_ saw the ‘ghost’! Please don’t smile! I was quite wide awake when I saw it—as wide awake as I am this moment—and in full possession of all my wits. And I can’t understand yet how it got in my room, or how it got out, or even what it was.

“I was alone in the house, too,” she continued, taking a photograph from the reticule and placing it, face down, on the desk. “Yesterday afternoon Mr. Peyton telephoned from his office that he must stay downtown rather late to attend a meeting of building contractors and suggested that I come in to the city for dinner, and bring a friend and ‘take in a show,’ and meet him afterward. But I wasn’t in the mood and told him I’d prefer to stay at home.

“‘But I won’t be home before twelve o’clock,’ he said, ‘and I don’t like the idea of your being all alone in that house at night, without even a servant on the place.’

“I reminded him that the chauffeur and gardener were still with us (they sleep in the garage and hadn’t been alarmed by the ‘spook’), and with these two and Mitch, our Scotch collie, to guard me I felt perfectly safe. As for the ‘ghost,’ I laughingly told him, I really would enjoy meeting it and having a chat on its astral adventures.

“He declined to unbend from his seriousness and became irritated when I refused to leave the house. We had quite a tiff, but I finally had my way, and the best he could get was a promise from me to lock myself in before going to bed. He said he would sleep in one of the guest chambers.

“After a pick-up meal in the kitchen, I went upstairs to our room and wrote letters until ten o’clock. Then I prepared for bed.

“For a moment I regretted not having done as my husband asked. The house _did_ seem eerie; no denying that—big and dark and silent, and not a living creature in it except myself.